The complexity encountered in designing integrated circuits increases greatly as the functional count of the integrated circuit increases. For example, in synthesis practice of very large scale integration (VLSI) designs, verification and testing problems play a major role in the final stages of development and designing. Especial difficulty is the testing of netlists and chips with complex sequential behavior, such as those found in search engines of different natures.
For instance, data communications are most often accomplished by sending a group of data in a packet, together with the address of the location for which the data is intended. A search for data may be accomplished by conducting a binary search based on the address or prefix where the data are retained, or stored, and the data returned in a packet to the requesting address. The search is conducted by a lookup procedure that matches the query address with the stored address. Therefore, a search engine provided to enable the search of the data needs to demonstrate such capabilities in a manner consistent with the contemplated usage of the search engine.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a built-in functional tester for search engines.